Two face rape charges

WOONSOCKET – Rape charges were filed in Sixth District Court Monday against two men police say raped a 42-year-old woman at knifepoint over the weekend.

Owen M. Hicks, 21, of North Smithfield, and Patrick Moore, 19, of Providence, were arrested about 3 a.m. Saturday after police stopped a blue pickup truck on the Court Street Bridge.

Police said the men had just driven away from the woman’s apartment on Harrison Avenue, where the alleged rape had occurred a few moments earlier. Police seized a pair of boxer shorts and a small knife from the vehicle, which Moore was driving.

Details of what happened in the woman’s apartment were not released. Detective Jamie Paone, a spokeswoman for the police, however, said that approximately an hour before the rape was reported, the woman got into the blue Ford Ranger with the two men and they all went to her apartment together.

Paone said the woman had not spent any time anywhere else with the men that evening before she got in the truck. The woman was out walking and she accompanied Hicks and Moore willingly.

After they were all inside the apartment, Paone said, the two men allegedly took out a knife and told the woman they would harm her if she didn’t have sex with them.

“She claims she was assaulted by both males,” Paone said. “She said they threatened her with a knife if she didn’t perform sexual acts with them.”

The woman was “visibly upset” when police officers arrived at her apartment to take a statement, but she did not show any signs of physical injury, according to Paone.

Nevertheless, she was transported to Landmark Medical Center, where medical personnel performed procedures to collect evidence of the alleged rape.

A judge ordered both men held without bail at the Adult Correctional Institutions following their initial appearance in District Court yesterday morning. Both were ordered to return to court for a review hearing on Nov. 4.

Police said the two men did not admit to being at the woman’s apartment when they were initially stopped by police. They said they had been drinking at a lounge on Wood Avenue. When police advised them that last call had been sounded some two hours earlier, they claimed they had just been “hanging out in the parking lot” for two hours, according to a police report.

In addition to rape, Hicks is also facing a misdemeanor charge of obstructing police for giving them a false name when the truck he was riding in was initially pulled over. He told police his first name was “Noah.”